COR­REC­TION: A pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this story mis­stated the title for Sal­ley Wood. Wood was former deputy staff dir­ect­or for the Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity on the Com­mit­tee on House Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Hav­ing served on both sides of the re­volving Hill-to-K-Street door, Paul Brath­waite knew that the lack of di­versity among con­gres­sion­al staffers was leav­ing the hir­ing pool for minor­ity lob­by­ists dry. So in 2006, he teamed up with more than 50 black staffers-turned-lob­by­ists who had de­cided that their path to the Hill as minor­it­ies was still too nar­row, and they should do something to widen it.

“The tal­ent pool you are pulling from is too small,” said Brath­waite, a former ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of the Con­gres­sion­al Black Caucus and now a lob­by­ist at the Podesta Group. “Es­pe­cially when many people of col­or and wo­men don’t get the op­por­tun­ity to be in seni­or po­s­i­tions, in con­gres­sion­al lead­er­ship of­fices, or staff dir­ect­ors on the key con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees.”

But six years later, Brath­waite and oth­ers from his group think there are still too few minor­it­ies work­ing in con­gres­sion­al of­fices, es­pe­cially at seni­or po­s­i­tions, and they blame House Demo­crats primar­ily for not do­ing enough. Of the 288 top staffers for House and Sen­ate lead­ers and con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees pro­filed in Na­tion­al Journ­al‘s 2011 Hill People re­port who provided their race when asked, 93 per­cent were white.

Mem­bers of Brath­waite’s group began meet­ing about the is­sue, and about 15 of them de­cided to take the mat­ter to Demo­crat­ic con­gres­sion­al lead­ers to see what could be done. The group held more than a dozen meet­ings throughout 2006 and in­to 2007 with staff mem­bers for Harry Re­id and Nancy Pelosi — who be­came Sen­ate ma­jor­ity lead­er and House speak­er, re­spect­ively, in 2007 — as well as with then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. Mem­bers of Brath­waite’s group first sug­ges­ted that of­fices in­ter­view at least one minor­ity can­did­ate for each open po­s­i­tion, a policy the NFL uses when hir­ing coaches. But that plan was shot down by each group they met with.

Brath­waite’s group re­peatedly heard chiefs of staff ex­plain that there were simply too few minor­it­ies ap­ply­ing for the po­s­i­tions they were seek­ing to fill. They didn’t have time to track down those who didn’t know to ap­ply, and pub­lish­ing open­ings on­line would lead to a de­luge of ap­plic­a­tions. One of the people voicing this com­plaint was Re­id’s deputy chief of staff, Dav­id Mc­Cal­lum.

“In a lot of of­fices, for bet­ter or worse, the ex­ist­ing pipelines were set up in a way that résumés came in through ex­ist­ing staff, former staff, friends, and sup­port­ers in the home state. The ma­jor­ity of those re­sumes that ended up on the desks of people like me didn’t have that much di­versity in them,” Mc­Cal­lum said.

Six months after the talks began, Re­id in 2007 cre­ated a new seni­or po­s­i­tion ded­ic­ated to track­ing down qual­i­fied minor­it­ies in­ter­ested in work­ing on the Hill. The aide was charged with dir­ect­ing a new pro­gram known as the Sen­ate Demo­crat­ic Di­versity Ini­ti­at­ive and re­cruit­ing qual­i­fied minor­ity ap­plic­ants for po­s­i­tions in Demo­crat­ic Sen­ate of­fices, in­clud­ing not just non­whites, but also wo­men, vet­er­ans, LGBT, dis­abled, or re­li­gious minor­it­ies. The newly cre­ated post was first filled by Mar­tina Brad­ford, an Afric­an-Amer­ic­an, who handed it off to Maria Mei­er, a Mex­ic­an-Amer­ic­an, in March of 2011. Today, Mei­er re­cruits ap­plic­ants, works with them on their résumés, and then sends résumés suit­able for open po­s­i­tions to Sen­ate Demo­crat­ic of­fices that re­quest a minor­ity ap­plic­ant to con­sider.

“The idea is, be­cause of our on­go­ing out­reach and the groups we work with, we are go­ing to have a pool of can­did­ates that of­fices might not or­din­ar­ily see if they are us­ing their ex­ist­ing net­works,” Mei­er told Na­tion­al Journ­al Daily.

When Mei­er came on board, Re­id in­tro­duced her to Sen­ate Demo­crats at a caucus lunch and in­struc­ted them to use her as a re­source when hir­ing. Over its five years of ex­ist­ence, the Di­versity Ini­ti­at­ive has re­cruited more than 700 can­did­ates and filled more than 200 jobs in Sen­ate Demo­crat­ic of­fices. Ninety per­cent of all in­di­vidu­al Demo­crat­ic sen­at­ors’ of­fices and 60 per­cent of all Sen­ate com­mit­tees have now hired at least one staffer through the ini­ti­at­ive. Mei­er es­tim­ates that about 80 per­cent of the ap­plic­ants she works with come from minor­ity staff as­so­ci­ation re­fer­rals, mean­ing they are ra­cially di­verse, and few­er come from Muslim, LGBT, or wo­men’s staff as­so­ci­ations.

House Demo­crats did not ad­opt the same ap­proach. In April 2010, four years after her staff’s meet­ings with Brath­waite’s group, Pelosi an­nounced the launch of an on­line House minor­ity résumé bank like Re­id’s, only it was to be man­aged by the Com­mit­tee on House Ad­min­is­tra­tion. But in Decem­ber of that year, the site was still not func­tion­ing des­pite pleas from minor­ity staff as­so­ci­ations. Pelosi and then-Ad­min­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee Chair­man Robert Brady, D-Pa, handed the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the web­site and résumé bank over to Re­pub­lic­ans when the House changed power.

Now, both sides of the com­mit­tee blame the oth­er for drop­ping the ball, while any résumés sub­mit­ted to the site, which was launched without a mon­it­or, re­main un­touched.

“We hope the Re­pub­lic­an lead­er­ship will see the value of con­tinu­ing the di­versity ini­ti­at­ive and re­vive the site we have left them,” said Greg Ab­bott, spokes­man for the Demo­crat­ic staff of the Com­mit­tee on House Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Sal­ley Wood, former deputy staff dir­ect­or for the Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity on the com­mit­tee, said Demo­crats nev­er asked or en­abled her staff to use the site they de­veloped.

“They launched the site and have ex­clus­ive ac­cess and con­trol of it and the résumés sub­mit­ted,” Wood said. “If the site isn’t be­ing used, and only they would know, then it’s be­cause they aren’t pro­mot­ing it or mon­it­or­ing it any­more.”

Pelosi spokes­man Drew Ham­mill said Pelosi should not be held re­spons­ible for the fail­ure of the site. “We were hope­ful that hous­ing [the site] with­in the Com­mit­tee on House Ad­min­is­tra­tion would al­low the web­site to be­come an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized part of the House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives. It also made sense to house it with­in the com­mit­tee as the web­site was de­signed to cov­er le­gis­lat­ive branch agen­cies and the of­ficers of the House,” he said. “Un­for­tu­nately, the House Re­pub­lic­an lead­er­ship has made a de­cision not to keep this web­site a pri­or­ity.”

A key mem­ber of Brath­waite’s group said he doesn’t blame one side or the oth­er of the House Ad­min­is­tra­tion Com­mit­tee for the fail­ure to launch a di­versity ini­ti­at­ive in the House. He blames Pelosi.

“They should have done what Re­id’s of­fice did. There might be some dif­fer­ent com­pon­ents between the Sen­ate and House, but noth­ing too hard to over­come,” said a former Demo­crat­ic Sen­ate staffer and Clin­ton White House of­fi­cial who joined Brath­waite in meet­ings with Pelosi’s staff but asked not to be iden­ti­fied for this story. “You can’t tell me that Pelosi could not have done what Re­id did. Re­id and key seni­or play­ers on his staff de­serve a lot of cred­it for mak­ing it hap­pen.”

This is the second story in a series that in­vest­ig­ates the lack of di­versity among staffers on Cap­it­ol Hill.

"The Senate standstill over a stopgap spending bill appeared headed toward a resolution on Friday night. Senators who were holding up the measure said votes are expected later in the evening. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin had raised objections to the continuing resolution because it did not include a full year's extension of retired coal miners' health benefits," but Manchin "said he and other coal state Democrats agreed with Senate Democratic leaders during a caucus meeting Thursday that they would not block the continuing resolution, but rather use the shutdown threat as a way to highlight the health care and pension needs of the miners."

Source:

UNCLEAR WHAT CAUSED CHANGE OF HEART

Giuliani Out of Running For State

5 hours ago

BREAKING

Donald Trump transition team announced Friday afternoon that top supporter Rudy Giuliani has taken himself out of the running to be in Trump's cabinet, though CNN previously reported that it was Trump who informed the former New York City mayor that he would not be receiving a slot. While the field had seemingly been narrowed last week, it appears to be wide open once again, with ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson the current favorite.

Source:

BEGINS AT MIDNIGHT ABSENT SENATE ACTION

Feds Begin Prepping for Government Shutdown

6 hours ago

THE LATEST

Given the Senate's inaction on the continuing budget resolution (so far), the White House "said it has begun to work with agencies to prepare for the possibility of a large swath of the federal workforce being furloughed without pay beginning at midnight." Even if a shutdown occurs, however, "Senate procedures will allow the chamber to approve the CR with only a handful of Democrats in support by Sunday morning. Of the roughly 900,000 federal employees who were subject to furloughs in agencies’ most recent calculations, most would not be materially impacted as they do not work on weekends."

Source:

ALSO VICE-CHAIR OF TRUMP’S TRANSITION TEAM

Trump Taps Rep. McMorris Rodgers for Interior Secretary

10 hours ago

BREAKING

RESULTS NOT NECESSARILY TO BE PUBLIC

White House Orders Review of Election Hacking

10 hours ago

THE LATEST

President Obama has called for a "full review" of the hacking that took place during the 2016 election cycle, according to Obama counterterrorism and homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco. Intelligence officials say it is highly likely that Russia was behind the hacking. The results are not necessarily going to be made public, but will be shared with members of Congress.